When I thought I had it all figured out, sh*t happens and my plans have changed. Long story short, my HT room will not be finished any time soon. Probably next fall at best. For your reference, the room I’m building is 12’ wide and 16’ deep with 8’ ceilings. Whatever I buy now will EVENTUALLY go to this room.

I’ve finally had it with this POS Bose cube system in my loft and am not waiting any longer. It’s done!! Finished!! Fired!! But, the loft area is very small and I will need book shelf speakers as I have no room for floor standing speakers. The EP 600 that I wanted in the HT room will defiantly not fit in the loft are either. The loft area is actually a dormer that will one day be a reading area. Its 12’ deep X 8’ wide. I’ve got a 46” TV stuffed up there now along with a couple couches. Quite cramped to say the least. I’ll have to go with the EP 500, and even that sub is too big, but I don’t want to go smaller.

So, now I’m trying to buy speakers for this loft area that I can use later in the HT room. For surrounds, the QS 8’s are simply too physically big, so I’m thinking about buying a set of QS 4’s and then use them as back surrounds in the HT room later. If I do this, will they work OK with QS 8’s? The 8’s (side surrounds) would be about 4’ closer to the screen than the 4’s. The 4’s would be mounted on the back wall.

For the mains and center in the loft, I figured I’d get the M22’s for mains and a VP100 for the center (again, space limitations). When I move to the HT room, what do you think about running these in parallel for the center channel? I’d place the VP 100 above the screen and the M22’s side by side under the screen.

Depending on the cost of wood veneer finish, I’ll either use my current set of M80’s in this room or buy a set of M60’s for the R/L front channels. If I can afford to do it, I’ll be replacing my existing M80’s with another set with wood veneer and moving the old ones to the HT room.

As much as I wanted the EP 600, I suspect it was overkill for a 12 X 16 room anyway…….

Your thoughts and opinions on my latest great friggin ideas above are appreciated.

I don't know if I can "help", but the utter lack of response to your obviously desperate situation prompted me to post anyway. Anybody looking for help in summarily dismissing B*se products deserves our respect and attention.

I don't have a complete understanding of your dimensional limitations, but how many cubic inches are you actually saving by going from the QS8 to QS4? I'd be reticent to employ the QS4's in a big "ultimate" theatre room, but I do not have a good reason for that position except that I would eventually get the itch to upgrade them.

Since it is a relatively small space, have you considered trying a phantom center channel for a while rather than getting the VP100? It might work pretty well depending upon placement, listening distance and such.

I think running two M22's and a VP100 as a center array in the new room would be possible, but is probably overkill. Also, it would almost undoubtedly require separate amplification; the load posed by three speakers in parallel would be pretty great.

What if...

You get a pair of M22's for current mains and ultimate dual, parallel fronts for the HT room. PLUS -

Option A (your current scenario): QS4's and a VP100. This might actually be okay, but you're going to wonder "what if" in the HT room with the QS4's. You could use them as surrounds and use the VP100 as the single rear channel (6.1).

Option B: QS8's and run a phantom center. When you move to the HT room, buy another pair of QS8's and you're set.

Optopn C: QS8's and a pair of M2's for the loft center. When you move, use the M2's as the rear HT speakers. I actually like this idea a lot, because you could implement full 6.1 right away in the HT room without buying anything extra (a single M2 for the center and for the rear with the M22's as mains). That way, if you didn't want to spend the money on new towers, you'd still have a fully functional HT with no "waste" and a clear upgrade path. When you buy the towers, you move to 7.1 with the M2's in the rear and the M22's in the center. Presto!

I hope you had a nice Christmas. I guess it's always "white" there, eh?

I’ve changed my plans so many times now, I suspect folks are tired of dealing with me Tom. Thank you for the ideas though. You’ve got me thinking.

I take it that the QS 8 and 4’s don’t go too well together? I suspect with the different woofer sizes they probably wouldn’t.

I can ‘probably’ make the QS 8’s work for the loft area. I will have to mount them on the ceiling and it’s vaulted on a 10/12 pitch. The little cubes work as I have a nifty multi angle bracket, and they are small. If I go with the 8’s, they will have to be mounted flush, and that was my primary concern. No matter how they are mounted, I bet they’ll still sound better than the cubes though….. So if you don’t see a problem with flush mounting them at that pitch of my ceiling, I’ll just go with the 8’s. They will also be directly over head where the couch is.

Phantom center? I was under the impression that the center channel is pretty important. I think I’ll be OK with running the VP and both M22’s later. I have a HK 7200 that drives a 4 ohm load pretty easy. What do you think?? I could also just buy the VP 150 and run that with the 22’s later if you think they’d be a better match. I'll try my HK in phantom mode and see how I like it. That would negate the need to buy a VP.

It’s white now….been raining a lot lately which is melting all my precious snow. I just picked up another snow toy and can’t ride it. That’s part of my HT room ‘delay’. Blew my cash on a foolishly impulsive 10K purchase.

I have QS4's in a small 11x11 room. They sound superb. I wouldn't feel shabby about getting them. I actually don't really see how they could do much better, maybe a little more low end, but the sub pics that up anyways, and no low end stuff is usually behind you. The volume level difference is minimal unless you are in a massive room. And, if space is an issue, having 4 QS4's is going to be plentiful.

People do have mixed QS4/QS8 setups. They use the QS4's as back and QS8's as surrounds.

Mike, I don't have any direct experience with the QS4's, and I certainly don't think they are shabby. My concern is that you already said you intended to use QS8's on the sides and that you might hear the same sort of timbre differences between the QS4 and QS8 that people perceive between the M22 and M3, for example.

I think running three speakers in parallel would give you a 2 ohm load. While I envy your HK, I'm still not sold on that idea.

Frankly, I don't think mounting the QS8's flush on the pitch sounds like a bad idea at all. I mean really, it is a loft area so you're not exacly in a laboratory anyway.

If you are sitting relatively close to the screen and you can place the mains reasonably close together, a phantom center might just work better than you think. It's worth a shot, anyway.

Good luck. I've always loved the pictures of your home that you shared some time ago; they make the visualizations of your questions very rich for me.

>>I’ve changed my plans so many times now, I suspect folks are tired of dealing with me Tom.

I can assure you that is not the case. What happens, I think, is that we look at every new thread and make a quick judgement as to whether we have enough knowledge or ideas to respond properly. I looked at your post and thought "uh-oh, I'm out of my depth here, will come back when I can think about it for a while before responding". It's a good thing Tom got things started though or the rest of us would probably still be on the fence

I haven't heard QS4s but AFAIK they do sound very similar other than below 100 Hz. The only issues with mixing 4s and 8s I can think of would be (a) 4s won't play as loud as 8s so you would probably have to use them as rears (like you suggested) to avoid limiting the rest of the system, (b) 4s roll off more sharply below 100 Hz so unless you had a multiple crossover receiver (eg. HK, Onkyo) you would probably have to run a 100 Hz crossover everywhere. I would definitely try to go with 8s if you can, if only for the flexibility.

I would have no qualms about mounting the 8s flush against an angled ceiling as long as I was confident the bracket would hold. The only reason I'm not doing that is that the angled ceiling stops too soon on one side of my room.

Will the QS's be actually overhead above the couch or out at the sides ?

I think we're all worried a bit about running an array of speakers as the center channel because the result may be "blurred" imaging from all the drivers reproducing the same frequencies, but I sure don't know enough to tell you if it's going to be a problem or not. Tom's point about impedence is a good one -- you would probably have to wire them in some kind of series-parallel arrangement to keep the impedence at 4 ohms or higher and Alan mentioned earlier that series wiring of speakers can be pretty problematic.

I've got the three cubes running in parellel and I'm using some old Kenwoods for R/L. That's where the M22's will have to go. I built the TV stand not thinking about going with bigger speakers some day. It was a 'temporary fix to get me by until the HT was done.

I think the best idea is to buy the M2’s and run them parallel for a center in this loft area like Tom suggested, and later use them as back surrounds in the HT room. Are the M2’s the best choice for this, or would the M3’s be better? It would appear that many folks prefer the M3’s over the M2’s, and they're only 20 bucks more. The reason I ask, is that I may eventually move these to my garage and would prefer the better sounding stand alone speaker of the two. – I’m keeping my options open here in case I get the itch to run QS-8’s as back surrounds.

Can these little fellers be mounted horizontally with the universal Axiom bracket? I can’t tell by the pictures. I don’t have enough room to mount them vertically in the HT area.

M2s are a bit flatter around the mid-bass; M3s will play a bit more loudly and are much more satisfying as standalone speakers. I would go with the M3s for sure if you are planning to use them standalone in the future.

I'm not 100% sure but I am "pretty sure" that the bracket will work either way. The mounting plate is round so it's unlikely you would run into obstruction problems horizontally but not vertically.

If you are running a pair of M2s or M3s as a center, I found they worked better lying on their side with the tweeters at the center. In my case I had to invert them (woofer up) to avoid interference between the woofer magnet and the CRT e-beam but AFAIK the plasma shouldn't be affected much by magnetic fields. If it is, mounting the speakers a couple of inches away from the set seemed to be enough.

EDIT -- as a charter member of the "Axiom should make a center channel with 6.5" drivers" club it just occurred to me that I should probably be trying a pair of M3s as a center myself. Hmmm....